John G. Lake was an early twentieth-century revivalist primarily known
for his gift of healing. Lake and his family were missionaries in
South Africa from 1908 to 1913, where Lake describes many healings,
baptisms of the Holy Spirit, and work God did in transforming the people
under his ministry. The Collected Works of John G. Lake
consists of a two short books (Adventures with God and Adventures
in Religion) and many of Lake’s sermons. It gives a good
foundation in Pentecostal thought and gives a practical perspective to the
baptism of the Holy Spirit and to how God heals.

Lake’s messages can be divided into several major themes, the most
obvious theme being that of divine healing. Many of Lake’s family
died of illness while he was growing up, but when Lake himself was close
to death, he went to visit Alexander Dowie and was completely
healed. As yet, however, he had no healing ministry. It was
when his wife was close to dying, that God gave him the verse Acts 10:38,
with the key perspective that sickness is not caused by God, but rather,
sickness is from the devil. At this his spirit rose up in anger and
he commanded sickness out of his wife and she promptly recovered. Over time his healing ministry increased as he prayed according to this
principle and as he was baptized in the Spirit.

Lake considered healing to be part of salvation. We are triune: body, soul (mind, will, and emotions), and spirit. Jesus’ death paid
for cleansing in all three areas, in our spirit (forgiveness), in our soul
(freedom from guilt and shame), and in our body (freedom from
sickness); see 1 Thess 5:23. He cites Isaiah prophesying that
Jesus would “take our infirmities and carry our diseases” as justification
for this, as well as Ps. 103:2-3, Matt 8:17, 1 Peter 2:24. We know
that Jesus saves everyone who comes to him (even non-Christians in the
West know that, even if they see no need for it), but Jesus also healed
everyone who came to him (Matt 4:23, Luke 9:6, Luke 9:11).. He never
turned anyone away. So we can be confident that God’s will is that
all be healed.

Lake claimed that healing is “scientific.” I am a little unclear
what he meant by that, exactly, but if he meant that healing is testable,
Lake did exactly that. He had scientists measure what happened when
he prayed for someone and they found that the cells in the person’s body
were suddenly very active. He also claimed that the Holy Spirit rests
on physical objects, for example the handkerchiefs of Paul the Apostle
brought healing, and Lake saw many similar instances. Lake also
established the healing rooms at Spokane, Washington, where thousands of
people were healed. People would stay as long as they needed to get
their healing, and each day they were given scripture readings and
teachings so that their faith gradually built up and they were healed,
although there were also many cases where people were simply healed on the
spot. Lake observed that if we do an altar call and do not follow
up, about 10% of the people will be faithful Christians, and another 30%
or so struggle along. He noted similar percentages with
healing. If you just pray for someone, about 10% will be
healed. But if you “disciple” them in healing, as his healing rooms
did, you see a near 100% success rate, just as when you disciple new
Christians, you see a similar rate of them becoming faithful.

Another theme is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (or of the Holy Ghost, as
Lake says). He says that the Baptism of the Spirit is about being
completely surrendered to God. “Baptism [of the Holy Ghost] means a
degree of the Spirit upon the life sufficient to give the Spirit of God
such absolute control of the person that He will be able to speak through
him in tongues.” This Baptism produces noticeable changes in the
person, generally with the effects that healings and sermons are more
powerful and the person is more “on fire” for God. Lake states that
“the consciousness of sinlessness seems to be God’s requirement for those
who would seek the baptism of the Spirit.” He does not go into more
details, and his view seems to stand at odds with what I have heard which
is essentially “the Baptism is God’s gift, all we can do is seek it
diligently.” I wonder if it has something to do with that when we
feel we have sin, we have a certain amount of shame that comes between us
and God, causing us to hide from Him, thus preventing us from being
completely surrendered to God. So when we fully accept that our sins
are gone, that we are sinless, then we have no shame, and we can be
completely surrendered to God.

A related theme is that Christianity is all about Christ in
us. After hearing from many religious leaders in cosmopolitan South
Africa, Lake observed that the thing that is unique about Christianity is
that Jesus lives in us. We are the habitation of
God. Lake even makes the bold statement that we are an incarnation,
which while it sounds heretical, if God is truly in us,
inhabiting us, that is pretty much the definition of incarnation. If
so, that puts a new light on what it means to be a Christian. We are
really little Christs, so we should have a similar life.

Lake’s writings are full of other themes that I was unable to distinguish
enough to categorize. He is adamant that He who is in us is more
powerful than the devil, so Christians can confidently cast out demons,
although in the stories he tells, sometimes it took a gift of faith to
rise up in him first). He taught that God has given us
responsibility in the world, observing that when Moses arrives at the Red
Sea with the Egyptian army at his back, God basically says “stop praying
and asking me to do something and use that rod I gave you.” Essentially, parting the Red Sea was Moses job to act in faith to get the
miracle. There are also a number of stories about Lake being
transported in the Spirit; he was taken to places in Africa while he
was still in America, for instance. He talks about the importance of
holiness and notes that “if unholiness exists in [a person’s] nature, it
is not there by the consent of the Spirit of God. If unholiness
exists in your life it is because your soul is giving consent to it, and
you are retaining it.” Finally, I like this quote: “If hell
has a characteristic, it is that of distraction. If heaven has a
particular characteristic, it is the presence of God, the calm of God, the
power of God, the love of God.”

Lake often stated that going to doctors was acting out of a lack of
faith. He noted that doctors at the time had themselves confided in
him that they were not able to cure people. Modern medicine often
can cure people, and many Charismatic Christians today consider a medical
healing to be equally a healing as a faith healing; “a medical
healing is not a second class healing,” says Paul Manwaring. From my
perspective, if you are hungry, you go to the grocery store, you don’t
pray for someone to bring you groceries, even though there are plenty of
stories about God miraculously providing food for the hungry. Similarly, if you are sick, going to the doctor is reasonable, although
there are many illnesses that modern medicine still cannot cure.

The two books by Lake are easy and exciting reading, as they are filled
with stories about amazing things that God did in his life, particularly
in Africa. The sermons are bit of a slog, even though each sermon is
really good. I recommend reading this book by reading one or two
sermons per day. This has the advantage that you do not get bogged
down, plus each day you are challenged with some very outrageous
claims. The thing is, John G. Lake lived all the claims; furthermore, he did the same things as Jesus did. Since Jesus says
we will do greater things than him (implying first doing the same things),
reading that John G. Lake succeeded in doing what Jesus did (absent the
Cross) is both exhilarating because it gives hope that I can also be like
Jesus, and really scary, because now I have no reason to not be like
Jesus. This book will transform your thinking.

Review: 10 (content), 5 (writing)

The writing is average, nothing special, but also not poorly
done. Since much of the book is transcripts of spoken messages, it
surely misses much of the quality that Lake delivered it with, so the lack
of literary quality was presumably compensated by oratorical skill in the
delivery. But you read this book for the content, not the quality of
writing. Even though Lake